Illuminated Letters – a treasury of decorative calligraphy is a wonderful book about illumination. The book is split in to four sections.The first section is a very detailed section on tools and techniques. Many books breeze over the tools you will need – not this one. All tools and materials are covered in great detail. For example, detailed guidance is given on how to prepare your workstation, fit a reservoir to the nib, paper types, preparing vellum and making egg tempera paint. Finally there is detailed instruction on gilding and using gold leaf.Section two deals with a wide of topics about preparing to work, including; layout and design, planning your work, enlarging letters and details, and transferring designs are covered in this section.The third section of the book is an alphabet directory containing completed decorated alphabets and numbers based on six historic styles which range from 7th-century Celtic to 15th-century Renaissance. Within each historic style, detailed instruction is given on how to create an illuminated letter. Each alphabet sections is followed by a selection of scripts suitable for writing out accompanying text.

The final section of this book is a contemporary gallery showing examples of work from some contemporary calligraphers. The work not only reflects the historical development of the craft, but also shows something of calligraphy and illumination’s exciting present.

Scribblers Calligraphy Books

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To ensure reliable ink flow, it is important to keep your calligraphy pen clean. Dip pens and nibs should be cleaned after each use. The easiest way to do this is to simply rinse the pen in running cold or warm water. Be careful not to loose the reservoirs down the plug hole! – I know Sometimes an old brush can be useful to help clean nibs and dip pens.Nibs and reservoirs must be dry before storing them. You can dry them using a sheet of kitchen roll. Lay the nibs and reservoirs at one end of kitchen roll sheet, and then fold the other end over the nibs. Finally gently squeeze the folded up sheet between your hands. It may be necessary to repeat to make sure everything is dry.If you clean your nib whilst it is still in the penholder you need to be careful not to get the metal ferrule wet as it will soon rust. This then makes it much harder to insert and remove the nib.

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